I'd rather give a child neat gin than let television rot his mind

How we love a good scare story - mobile phones fry your brains, sunshine gives you cancer, or whatever the current mass fright happens to be.

Remember when we were all going to go mad because we ate beef or die from eating eggs?

Maybe these fears are justified, maybe not. Yet the one undoubted major health risk of our time, which affects us all and is particularly perilous for children, is the one we ignore.

There it is, in every home, doing terrible mental and - quite possibly - physical damage. But we pay no attention because it suits us to pretend it is safe.

This menace is the habitual watching of television, especially by young children.

I have argued for years that it is a serious threat to civilisation, demolishing imagination and suppressing free thought.

But it has been hard to get people to listen because TV has become the third parent, the electronic nanny, the free babysitter, the great distractor which allows adults to ignore their children and carry on with their lives, much as they did before they were parents.

They think it comes free of charge. But they are wrong. While it keeps children quiet, TV also robs them of individuality and shrivels their minds.

Adults will defend it by laudingthe supposed educational power of Sesame Street or the 'superb nature programmes' - TV's respectable fig leaves, behind which so much garbage and muck is hidden.

Of course, a fully formed grown-up mind can cope with a little TV, just as it can cope with a few glasses of wine.

Why, I've even appeared on it myself. But I would rather give a small child neat gin than expose him to TV.

And at last, in the form of Dr Aric Sigman, I have some scientific backing. He links TV with learning difficulties, Alzheimer's, obesity and diabetes and advises - as I do - that the very young should be denied it completely.

In my view, TV also promotes conformism, making us all look more alike, speak more alike and have identical senses of humour.

I don't think empty but goodlooking figures such as Diana Spencer and Anthony Blair could possibly have become important in a world without TV's insidious brain-softening power.

Isn't that frightening enough? How about a full-scale panic? Where's Edwina Currie when you need her?

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Jessica the fake heroine - and symbol for a war led by lies

Jessica Lynch, who last week publicly disavowed American propaganda claims that she is a war heroine, is a fitting symbol of the whole Iraq project.

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Conceived by ideological fanatics, it has been sustained from the beginning by transparent lies - the latest being that all the trouble in Iraq is caused by Iranian interference, when the real problem is American and British interference.

The shaped charges used against British and American troops are not new, or a secret weapon.

In fact, they were used by Nazi paratroopers to capture the Belgian fort at Eben Emael in 1940.

The next and most important lie is the one that says there will be civil war if we leave Iraq. There is civil war now, which we are powerless to control, and which we started.

Leave now, and then we won't have to worry about what to do with Prince Harry, either.

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I was wrong...Cameron has suffered terribly (but I still won't vote for him)

How do I put this?

The chapter about David Cameron's son Ivan, in the new biography of the Tory leader, is intensely moving and very painful to read.

His parents' patient, unsentimental devotion to this gravely disabled boy, lost in some unknowable world and without any hope of improvement or recovery, is much to their credit.

I once wrote that Mr Cameron had never really been put through any major test in life. It is clear that I was quite wrong. There can be few harder trials than to watch a child suffer in this way. I am sorry I said it.

My point is that this has nothing to do with politics. It would be true whatever Mr Cameron's political position was, whatever party he led. It wouldn't - and shouldn't - make me or you vote for him.

And, now that we know about it, I think it would be better if it was left at that.

However, I fear that some of Mr Cameron's advisers may be under the misguided impression that some political use might be made of this sadness. Hostile interviewers are not allowed to question Mr Cameron. Friendly ones are invited to one of his three houses and introduced to Ivan.

Mr Cameron should ignore these advisers. We know everything we are entitled to know about this private matter.

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• Are you a sex-offender? Or a burglar? No? Then why should you be interrogated, fingerprinted and placed on a State register? Well, you will be, if you wait too long to renew your passport - and you'll also be charged extra for the humiliation. To avoid this, renew it this summer. I'm told there's a website claiming you can't do this until your passport has nine months or less to run. This is incorrect. You can renew it when you like.

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• Several news media reported this week that millions of 'litres' of sewage were flooding into the Firth of Forth, presumably because of growing pressure from the metric police.

Why did this sound so odd? Mainly because a litre is a completely artificial measure, neither large, nor small, nor related to anything anyone does. The only thing we consciously buy in litres in this country is fruit juice or perhaps milk.

We buy petrol by the pound Sterling. No decent wine is sold in litre bottles, and only very fat Germans who wear leather shorts buy beer in litres. Sewage, if it has to be measured at all, surely comes in gallons.

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• Having suddenly discovered the consequences of mass immigration - sweatshop working conditions, migrant semislaves living ten to a room - a BBC reporter asked breathlessly: "Is this what we meant when we spoke of open borders and free movement of labour?" To which the answer can only be "Yup". But well done for finally realising it.